Databases

Resources in this category:

All Movie Guide
http://www.allmovie.com/

Only able to remember a few details about a film? This site offers a cross-referenced index which allows you to search more than 200,000 feature films and documentaries using an unlimited combination of features or criteria, making it easy to find the film you are looking for even if you can only remember a few things about it. The searchable database includes reviews, information on cast and crew, and the film's availability on video and DVD. It also provides essays about film and a glossary of film terms.

Based on the Book
http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/movies/

'Based on the Book' is a compilation of over 1,000 book titles, short stories, and plays that have been made into motion pictures. Utilizing the Internet Movie Database as the authority on release dates, all movies in this collection have been released since 1980.

Black Film Center/Archive
http://www.indiana.edu/~bfca/

The Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University "is a repository of films and related materials by and about African Americans. Included are films which have substantial participation by African Americans as writers, actors, producers, directors, musicians, and consultants, as well as those which depict some aspect of black experience." The site provides the opportunity to view short film clips (may require special software), view lists of Center publications, and find out more about the Center's collections.

Black Film Research Online
http://blackfilm.uchicago.edu/

Here is a resource guide for the study of black film culture.

Cinemedia
http://afi.cinemedia.org/

A film and media directory with over 25,000 links, Cinemedia is a helpful information source particularly for people in the film business or who are doing film research.

Disney A-Z - Archives
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/index.html

This site contains information on all the movies and characters created by the Walt Disney Company (both live action and animated), gathered from the Disney archives. Images, dates, and lists of cast members or voice actors are all provided. This site uses frames.

Gnod
http://www.gnod.net/

Find new authors, music, movies, or people that you like based on authors, music, movies, or people that you know you like. For example, enter a name into the Gnooks (books) page and watch a constellation of similar writers be generated with the author you entered at the center. The more similar an author is to the name you entered, the closer they appear to the center of the constellation.

Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive
http://www.archive.org/movies/

This area of the Internet Archive has over 2,000 digitized films from North America, mostly advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur, from 1927 on. The Archive's goal in making these films freely available to the public is to encourage widespread use of moving images in new contexts by people who may not have used them before.

Masterpiece Theatre - The Archive
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/index.html

A database dedicated to the history of Masterpiece Theatre, the PBS series that has adapted modern and contemporary classic works of literature for more than 30 years. The site offers an exhaustive amount of material, media, and insight into the series. Not only can you read synopses of episodes – you can also review extra documentaries, preview video clips, and search by author, title, actors, and even date to find your favorite episode.

The Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive
http://www.mptv.net/main/main_elements/mainpage.htm

"This site contains images owned and/or represented by the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive Inc. (MPTV) - home to over 23,000 classic images dating from the 1910's to the present." You can search for and view images online, but you must obtain the proper rights if you wish to make further use of the images.

Movies in Theaters
http://www.tvguide.com/movies-theaters

Features movie industry news, reviews of new films, a database of "40,000+ titles and bios and 750,000+ filmographies," features and interviews, video charts, and more.

Pacific Film Archive--Past Film Program Notes
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/search/film

A searchable database of "over 16,000 critical and historical texts about films shown at PFA from 1979 to the present, many of them constituting unique documentation of rare films."

WPA Film Library
http://www.wpafilmlibrary.com/

"The WPA Film Library was founded in 1987 by independent producers, as a repository of archival and stock footage for our own documentary programming. Since becoming a part of the MPI Media Group in 1989, our ties to the production community have become even stronger, and our holdings have grown to more than 50,000 hours of footage. "